A resolution in support of allowing cities to hold wet-dry elections was adopted during a business meeting that capped the league’s annual convention in Little Rock.

"It passed with flying colors with no questions asked," said Farrar, who is also on the league’s first-class city advisory board. "Everybody felt it should be up to the cities to determine their own fate, wet or dry."

The vote was requested by the cities of Barling, Fairfield Bay and Horseshoe Bend, league executive director Don Zimmerman said.

"They’re dry, and they want the right to have an election to go wet," he said. "If my folks want to have that local option, we’re going to try to get it for them. We’re all about local control."

In November 2012, Barling residents voted 1,081-544 to allow liquor sales in their city. After residents filed a lawsuit, Circuit Court Judge Steve Tabor voided the vote two months later. His decision was based on a 1944 election in which the entire southern district of Sebastian County voted to go dry.

State law requires an entire dry district to vote on whether a single city can allow liquor sales.

During the 2013 Arkansas legislative session, Sen. Jake Files, R-Fort Smith, filed a Senate bill to give all cities power to vote for or against liquor sales. That effort stalled in the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs.

Zimmerman said he expects a proposal reflecting Friday’s vote to be part of the Municipal League’s legislative package for next year’s session.

Farrar, who led the liquor initiative, hopes things will be different this time around.

"When you’ve got 500 cities behind you, I would think the local legislators will fall in line," he said.

Barling Ward 3 Director David Brigham said the legislation is the city’s backup plan in case a proposed constitutional amendment to make every county in Arkansas wet fails. The proposal by attorney David Couch would allow the manufacture, sale, distribution and transportation of alcohol in every county in the state effective July 1, 2015.

About 78,000 signatures of registered Arkansas voters are needed to place the proposal on the November general election ballot.

"If this election follows through like it’s supposed to, every county in the state will go wet," Farrar said. "They’d have to vote to go dry. We’d be able to sell liquor in July 2015."